


a castle of sweet dreams

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Baking, Banter, Charles Bakes, Cooking Show, Daydreaming, Dreaming of Home, Established Relationship, Gingerbread Houses, Introspection, M/M, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik drops in on Charles when the kitchen is full of lovely sugary smells, but that's not what's unusual about today.</p><p>What's unusual is that watching Charles work makes Erik think of home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a castle of sweet dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/gifts).



Erik puts his car in park and double-checks the brakes one more time before opening the door, and then he takes a deep breath once his feet are on the sidewalk. He’s familiar now with the scents of smoke and rust and petrichor - it’s been a rainy month, and what little sunlight they can get is pale and wan and barely warm - but there’s a different scent on the wind. Spices and the deep richness that can only be sugar heating in a hot oven. He looks across the street, looks at the window hung in bright green and ivory, and thinks of home and blue eyes and baking sheets.

The rest of the world knows that Charles Xavier can create towering croquembouches with the same ease with which he comes up with new ideas for brownies and nut brittles, that sometimes he’s in the mood to make candied fruits like beautiful jewels, pineapple and kumquat and even violets - and all out of the tiny kitchen of the tiny apartment that he currently calls home, where he creates the videos that he uploads to Youtube, to the sounds of the greats. Opera at a very low volume, almost subliminal, and always carefully annotated and acknowledged in the credit rolls.

What they don’t know is that when Charles is not on camera, when he’s not recording what he’s doing, he switches to Eddie Izzard on full blast, so by the time Erik’s loping up the stairs to the third floor he can already hear a familiar punchline: “Cake or death?”

He gets in with the key that Charles had given him, just in time for Charles to start laughing, rich and loud and as sweet as the scent of caramel that constantly pervades the kitchen.

And Charles is up to his elbows in confectioner’s sugar, and there are bottles of icing paste scattered on the counter, and Charles waves the empty sifter in his hand in time with Izzard making fun of himself.

Erik stares, and mutters, “What the hell is happening here,” and “I say that every time I’m in this place,” and he watches Charles laugh for just a minute before he finds himself grinning along as well.

“Hello, Erik,” Charles says, “be right with you in a moment. I’m experimenting today and I need an extra pair of hands.”

Erik pretends to leer at him, though Charles is beautifully put-together as usual: a faded blue buttondown over a pair of battered chinos. He’s barefoot, as he often is in his kitchen when he’s not on camera. “Okay, when are you getting undressed?”

His reward is Charles rolling his eyes extravagantly. “Do pay attention, or you won’t get any of what I’m making today.”

“Which is what?”

“Take a nice deep breath,” Charles says with a wink, “and guess.”

Erik sniffs appreciatively. There is a stronger scent of spices in the air, and he glances at the oven, which is glowing warmly at him, a welcome source of warmth in all the chill they’ve been having lately. “I’m beginning to think you’re experimenting because you spent the night buried in your comforters, again,” Erik says, and he goes over and kisses Charles on the side of his head. Charles’s hair smells like seawater and sugar all at the same time.

“Drat, you’ve caught me,” Charles says in a monotone, the effect of which he immediately kills with another wide grin. “It’s my kitchen, I do what I want.” 

“Yes, you do. So - another pair of hands?” Erik prompts as he washes up at the sink. There is an impressive pile of dishes stacked beneath the tap like some kind of strange art installation. Bowls and whisks and a couple of large wooden spoons.

“How are your carpentry skills?” 

“Nonexistent,” Erik deadpans. “I mean it, I suck. Call Edie and ask her how I did in woodworking class at school.”

“We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best, then,” and Charles turns to the oven; when he touches the handle to the door the timer on the stovetop goes off and he slaps it into silence.

Erik shakes his head as Charles pulls out three baking pans. The rich smell of baked spices and sugar is even stronger now, and he takes a long, appreciative breath of it, and feels the warmth spread right through him, immensely comforting in a way that reminds him of Edie’s weekly batches of challah and garlic knots.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Charles prompts as he takes a stack of small bowls from one of his cupboards, dealing the crockery out onto the counter and putting little plastic spoons in each. “This is wheatless gingerbread, and I made a batch of royal glaze, and if you’re paying attention I don’t have any people-shaped cutters lying around. All I have’s that,” and he indicates the sharp knives close at hand.

Erik narrows his eyes. “You’re building a gingerbread house? Charles, we’re nowhere near the holidays.”

“And that’s what I said to the nice newspaper people, but they said it wasn’t a holiday thing, just a thing-to-do-with-kids thing. I figured I’d say yes to the article after I re-tested the recipes.”

“Which you dug up from where?”

“Raven gave them to me, actually. She drafted me to make cookies for Irene once. It seems to have worked.” Charles grins and pokes at the gingerbread in one of the pans. “Another minute; I can’t cut these things straightaway. Crumbs,” he explains.

Erik nods and takes another deep breath of the gingerbread-redolent air. “Smells really good.”

“It does,” Charles says, and he leans up into Erik’s personal space for a moment, his cheek smooth against Erik’s.

When he pulls away, back to his appointed task, Erik follows him, and he watches Charles sharpen his knife a little more, two or three decisive strokes against the steel that he keeps next to the kitchen sink. He watches Charles cut carefully into two of the sheets of cake, the movements of the knife creating very specific shapes - if he squints, he can see the walls of the house taking shape, the end pieces, the trapezoidal shape that must be the chimney.

He can’t help but want to think about another house entirely: a house with a kitchen large enough for someone to actually aim a video camera in Charles’s direction. A house with a library big enough to hold all of his books and all of Charles’s books together, bar the handfuls that would eventually make their way out into the rest of the spaces that they would share in that place. A house with a bedroom that faces east, so he’d have the chance to catch the morning sun as it stole in to touch Charles’s cheek with golden warmth.

“...rik? Earth to Erik,” Charles says.

Erik blinks, and Charles is looking up at him, and his smile is a cross between amused and concerned. Head tilted to the side, eyebrows slightly pulled together. 

“I - sorry, time to get to work?” Erik asks, managing to tear his eyes from Charles’s face, to the work surface where the cut-out pieces are arranged neatly next to the last sheet of gingerbread, which is a little cracked on the surface but is otherwise in one cooling piece.

“Yes, but - ” Charles puts everything down to take both of Erik’s hands in his own. “Let me in? Tell me what got you lost in your own head, if you would?”

Erik knows that he blanches and then blushes, he can feel the heat sweep into his face, but he hangs on to Charles and fights to keep looking him in the eyes. “I - well, you know where I live, right? Expensive apartment, I don’t even stay there that much any more, because I’m traveling or I’m catching up to you or we’re here.”

“I like it when you’re here,” Charles says, “and I like it when we sleep in the same bed. No matter where that bed happens to be.”

“Well you deserve a nice bed, a big bed,” Erik says, “one that faces the east maybe. So you could wake up and be warm, because of the sunrise.”

“That’d be nice. Only - how? I’m not sure I can turn my bed around in here, or move it, or something.”

Erik considers his next words very carefully. “I’m - I want you to understand, okay, that this is a totally no-pressure thing, you don’t have to say anything now, this is just me thinking out loud and you can say yes or no or fuck off at any point - ”

Charles squeezes his hands, says, gently, “Erik. Out with it, please.”

“I’dliketoliveinanactualhousewithyouoneday,” Erik says, all in one breath.

“Really?” But when Charles says it, the word doesn’t sound like _no_ and doesn’t sound like _fuck off_. He says it like he’s turning it over in his mind, thoughtful and gentle like when he’s thinking very hard about a new idea for a cake, like he’s looking at all possibilities. “Really,” Charles says again, and he lights up and pulls Erik into a kiss, soft and sweet and powerful enough to make Erik’s knees buckle, just slightly. “I’d love that. So long as you let me design the kitchen.”

“That was the idea,” Erik says, and there’s relief pounding down his nerves like the best kind of lightning strike, relief and an overwhelming love that makes him pull on Charles’s hands and say, “Kiss me again?”

“At this point you’re allowed to stop asking and just do - ”

So Erik does: he yanks Charles in, puts one hand in Charles’s hair and the other just up Charles’s shirt, and he kisses Charles fiercely; he keeps going until they’re both more than breathless, until all they can do is cling to each other, until Charles laughs and chuckles about “It’s better to work with cold gingerbread anyway, I only needed it to be warm to cut it properly,” and Erik fiddles and fiddles with the colors that go into the bowls of royal glaze until Charles rolls his eyes, derisive and affectionate all at once.

The gingerbread house is surprisingly easy to assemble: Erik holds the pieces steady so Charles can glue them in place, and Charles puts his hands over Erik’s to paint in a series of lines like tiles on the roof pieces, and Erik suggests colors for the door and for the windows.

“It’s a good house, don’t you think?” Charles says as he takes photos of the house with his mobile phone. “Now we have to think about building a bigger one. Which you have to be there for. You’re good at helping me make things.”

“Am I?” Erik says, and he knows he sounds pleased. He can’t stop smiling.

“Absolutely. Remember my attempts at croquembouche?” Charles asks. “The best one I ever built was the one you helped me with.”

“Which we ate afterwards, and Raven yelled at us for not leaving her any.”

Charles grins. “That was something for us because we made it together.”

Erik stops, and thinks about what Charles has just said - and when he’s done thinking he puts an arm around Charles’s shoulders and pulls him in, as close as they can be when they’re standing side by side. “So let me make things with you. Today and tomorrow and - and always.”

“And always,” Charles says.

After a moment, he adds, “Tell me more about that house,” and Erik laughs, and does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Afrocurl for the quick beta.


End file.
